For slander lives upon succession,Forever housed, where it oncegets possession. Comedy of Errors.Not out of malice, but mere zeal,Because he was an infidel.Hudibras
“Blessed old London, how delightful it is to come back to it!” exclaimed Erica, as she and Tom drove home from Paddington on the afternoon of her return from Greyshot. “Tell the man not to go through the back streets, there's a good boy! Ah, he's doing it of his own accord! Why, the park trees are much browner than the Mountshire ones!”
“We have been prophesying all manner of evil about your coming back,” said Tom looking her over critically from head to foot. “I believe mother thought you would never come that the good Christians down at Greyshot having caught you would keep you, and even the chieftain was the least bit in the world uneasy.”
“Nonsense,” said Erica, laughing, “he knows better.”
“But they did want to keep you?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get out of it?”
“Said, 'Much obliged to you, but I'd rather not.' Enacted Mrs. Micawber, you know, 'I never will, no I never will leave Mr. Micawber.'”
“Mr. Fane-Smith must have been a brute ever to have proposed such a thing!”
“Oh, no! Not at all! Within certain limits he is a kind-hearted man, only he is one of those who believe in that hateful saying, 'Men without the knowledge of God are cattle.' And, believing that, would treat atheists as I should be sorry to treat Friskarina.”
“And what is the world of Greyshot like?”
“It is very lukewarm about public questions, and very boiling hot about its own private affairs,” said Erica. “But I have learned now how people in society can go on contentedly living their easy lives in the midst of such ignorance and misery. They never investigate, and when any painful instance is alluded to, they say, 'Oh! But it CAN'T be true!' The other day they were speaking of Kingsley's pamphlet, 'Cheap clothes and nasty,' and one lady said that was quite an evil of the past, that the difficulty nowadays was to get things at reasonable prices. When I told her that women only get twopence for doing all the machine work of an ulster, and have to provide their machine, cotton, food, light, and fuel, she exclaimed, 'Oh, that is incredible! It must be exaggerated! Such things couldn't be now!' When Aunt Isabel heard that I had known cases of men being refused admission to a hospital supported by public subscriptions, on the ground of their atheism, she said it was impossible. And as to physical ill treatment, or, in fact, any injustice having ever been shown by Christian to atheist, she would not hear of it. It was always 'My dear, the atmosphere in which you have lived has distorted your vision,' or, 'You have been told, my dear, that these things were so!' To tell her that they were facts which could be verified was not the smallest good, for she wouldn't so much as touch any publication connected with secularism.”
“None are so blind as those who will not see,” said Tom. “They will go on in this way till some great national crisis, some crash which they can't ignore, wakes them up from their comfortable state. 'It can't be true,' is no doubt a capital narcotic.”
“Father is at home, I suppose? How do you think he is?”
“Oh, very well, but fearfully busy. The 'Miracles' trial will probably come on in November.”
Erica sighed. There was a silence. She looked out rather sadly at the familiar Oxford Street shops.
“You have not come back approving of the Blasphemy Laws, I hope?” said Tom, misinterpreting her sigh.
Her eyes flashed.
“Of course not!” she said, emphatically.
“Mr. Osmond has, as usual, been getting into hot water for speaking a word on the chieftain's behalf.”
“Did he speak? I am glad of that,” said Erica, brightening. “I expect Mr. Pogson's conduct will stir up a good many liberal Christians into showing their disapproval of bigotry and injustice. Ah! Here is the dear old square! The statue looks ten degrees moldier than when I left!”
In fact everything looked, as Erica expressed it, “moldier!” “Persecution Alley,” the lodging house, the very chairs and tables seemed to obtrude their shabbiness upon her. Not that she cared in the least; for, however shabby, it was home the home that she had longed for again and again in the luxury and ease of Greyshot.
Raeburn looked up from a huge law book as she opened the door of his study.
“Why, little son Eric!” he exclaimed. “You came so quietly that I never heard you. Glad to have you home again, my child! The room looks as if it needed you, doesn't it?”
Erica laughed for the study was indeed in a state of chaos. Books were stacked up on the floor, on the mantel piece, on the chairs, on the very steps of the book ladder. The writing table was a sea of papers, periodicals, proofs, and manuscripts, upon which there floated with much difficulty Raeburn's writing desk and the book he was reading, some slight depression in the surrounding mass of papers showing where his elbows had been.
“About equal to Teufelsdroch's room, isn't it?” he said, smiling. “Everything united in a common element of dust.' But, really, after the first terrible day of your absence, when I wasted at least an hour in hunting for things which the tidy domestic had carefully hidden, I could stand it no longer, and gave orders that no one was to bring brush or duster or spirit of tidiness within the place.”
“We really must try to get you a larger room,” said Erica, looking round. “How little and poky everything looks.”
“Has Greyshot made you discontented?”
“Only for you,” she replied, laughing. “I was thinking of Mr. Fane-Smith's great study; it seems such a pity that five foot three, with few books and nothing to do, should have all that space, and six foot four, with much work and many books, be cramped up in this little room.”
“What would you say to a move?”
“It will be such an expensive year, and there's that dreadful Mr. Pogson always in the background.”
“But if a house were given to us? Where's Tom? I've a letter here which concerns you both. Do either of you remember anything about an old Mr. Woodward who lived at 16 Guilford Square?”
“Why, yes! Don't you remember, Tom? The old gentleman whose greenhouse we smashed.”
“Rather!” said Tom. “I've the marks of the beastly thing now.”
“What was it? Let me hear the story,” said Raeburn, leaning back in his chair with a look of amusement flickering about his rather stern face.
“Why, father, it was years ago; you were on your first tour in America, I must have been about twelve, and Tom fourteen. We had only just settled in here, you know; and one unlucky Saturday we were playing in the garden at 'King of the Castle.'”
“What's that?” asked Raeburn.
“Why, Tom was king, and I was the Republican Army; and Tom was standing on the top of the wall trying to push me down. He had to sing:
“'I'm the king of the castle! Get down, you dirty rascal!'
And somehow I don't know how it was instead of climbing up, I pushed him backward by mistake, and he went down with an awful crash into the next garden. We knew it was the garden belonging to No. 16 quite a large one it is for the hospital hasn't any. And when at last I managed to scramble on to the wall, there was Tom, head downward, with his feet sticking up through the roof of a greenhouse, and the rest of him all among the flower pots.”
Raeburn laughed heartily.
“There was a brute of a cactus jammed against my face, too,” said Tom. “How I ever got out alive was a marvel!”
“Well, what happened?” asked Raeburn.
“Why, we went round to tell the No. 16 people. Tom waited outside, because he was so frightfully cut about, and I went in and saw an old, old man a sort of Methusaleh who would ask my name, and whether I had anything to do with you.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I can't remember except that I asked him to let us pay for the glass by installments, and tried to assure him that secularists were not in the habit of smashing other people's property. He was a very jolly old man, and of course he wouldn't let us pay for the glass though he frightened me dreadfully by muttering that he shouldn't wonder if the glass and the honesty combined cost him a pretty penny.”
“Did you ever see him again?”
“Not to speak to, but we always nodded to each other when we passed in the square. I've not seen him for ages. I thought he must be dead.”
“He is dead,” said Raeburn; “and he has left you three hundred pounds, and he has left me his furnished house, with the sole proviso that I live in it.”
“What a brick!” cried Tom and Erica, in a breath. “Now fancy, if we hadn't played at 'King of the Castle' that day!”
“And if Erica had not been such a zealous little Republican?” said Raeburn, smiling.
“Why, father, the very greenhouse will belong to you; and such a nice piece of garden! Oh, when can we go and see it, and choose a nice room for your study?”
“I will see Mr. Woodward's executor tomorrow morning,” said Raeburn. “The sooner we move in the better for there are rocks ahead.”
“The 'we' refers only to you and Erica,” said Aunt Jean, who had joined them. “Tom and I shall of course stay on here.”
“Oh, no, auntie!” cried Erica in such genuine dismay that Aunt Jean was touched.
“I don't want you to feel at all bound to have us,” she said. “Now that the worst of the poverty is over, there is no necessity for clubbing together.”
“And after you have shared all the discomforts with us, you think we should go off in such a dog-in-the-mangerish way as that!” cried Erica. “Besides, it really was chiefly owing to Tom, who was the one to get hurt into the bargain. If you won't come, I shall—” she paused to think of a threat terrible enough, “I shall think again about living with the Fane-Smiths.”
This led the conversation back to Greyshot, and they lingered so long round the fire talking that Raeburn was for once unpunctual, and kept an audience at least ten minutes waiting for him.
No. 16 Guilford Square proved to be much better inside than a casual passer in the street would have imagined. Outside, it was certainly a grim-looking house, but within it was roomy and comfortable. The lower rooms were wainscoted in a sort of yellowish-brown color, the upper wainscoted in olive-green. There was no such thing as a wall paper in the whole house, and indeed it was hard to imagine, when once inside it, that you were in nineteenth-century London at all.
Raeburn, going over it with Erica the following evening, was a little amused to think of himself domiciled in such an old-world house. Mr. Woodward's housekeeper, who was still taking care of the place, assured them that one of the leaden pipes outside bore the date of the seventeenth century, though the two last figures were so illegible that they might very possibly have stood for 1699.
Erica was delighted with it all, and went on private voyages of discovery, while her father talked to the housekeeper, taking stock of the furniture, imagining how she would rearrange the rooms, and planning many purchases to be made with her three hundred pounds. She was singing to herself for very lightness of heart when her father called her from below. She rand down again, checking her inclination to sing as she remembered the old housekeeper, who had but recently lost her master.
“I've rather set my affections on this room,” said Raeburn, leading her into what had formerly been the dining room.
“The very place where I came in fear and trembling to make my confession,” said Erica, laughing. “This would make a capital study.”
“Yes, the good woman has gone to fetch an inch tape; I want to measure for the book shelves. How many of my books could I comfortably house in here, do you think?”
“A good many. The room is high, you see; and those two long, unbroken walls would take several hundred. Ah! Here is the measuring tape. Now we can calculate.”
They were hard at work measuring when the door bell rang, and Tom's voice was heard in the passage, asking for Raeburn.
“This way, Tom!” called Erica. “Come and help us!”
But a laughing reference to the day of their childish disaster died on her lips when she caught sight of him for she knew that something was wrong. Accustomed all her life to live in the region of storms, she had learned to a nicety the tokens of rough weather.
“Hazeldine wishes to speak to you,” said Tom, turning to Raeburn. “I brought him round here to save time.”
“Oh! All right,” said Raeburn, too much absorbed in planning the arrangement of his treasures to notice the unusual graveness of Tom's face. “Ask him in here. Good evening, Hazeldine. You are the first to see us in our new quarters.”
Hazeldine bore traces of having lived from his childhood a hard but sedentary life. He was under-sized and narrow chested. But the face was a very striking one, the forehead finely developed, the features clearly cut, and the bright, dark eyes looking out on the world with an almost defiant honesty, a clearness bordering on hardness.
Raeburn, entirely putting aside for the time his own affairs, and giving to his visitor his whole and undivided attention, saw in an instant that the man was in trouble.
“Out of work again?” he asked. “Anything gone wrong?”
“No sir,” replied Hazeldine; “but I came round to ask if you'd seen that circular letter. 'Twas sent me this morning by a mate of mine who's lately gone to Longstaff, and he says that this Pogson is sowing them broadcast among the hands right through all the workshops in the place, and in all England, too, for aught he knows. I wouldn't so much as touch the dirty thing, only I thought maybe you hadn't heard of it.”
Without a word, Raeburn held out his hand for the printed letter. Erica, standing at a little distance, watched the faces of the three men Tom, grave, yet somewhat flushed; Hazeldine, with a scornful glitter in his dark eyes; her father? Last of all she looked at him and looking, learned the full gravity of this new trouble. For, as he read, Raeburn grew white, with the marble whiteness which means that intense anger has interfered with the action of the heart. As he hastily perused the lines, his eyes seemed to flash fire; the hand which still held the measuring tape was clinched so tightly that the knuckle looked like polished ivory.
Erica could not ask what was the matter, but she came close to him. When he had finished reading, the first thing his eye fell upon was her face turned up to his with a mute appeal which, in spite of the anxiety in it, made her look almost like a child. He shrank back as she held out her hand for the letter; it was so foul a libel that it seemed intolerable to him that his own child should so much as read a line of it.
“What is it?” she asked at length, speaking with difficulty.
“A filthy libel circulated by that liar Pogson! A string of lies invented by his own evil brain! Why should I keep it from you? It is impossible! The poisonous thing is sown broadcast through the land. You are of age there read it, and see how vile a Christian can be!”
He was writhing under the insult, and was too furious to measure his words. It was only when he saw Erica's brave lip quiver that he felt with remorse that he had doubled her pain.
She had turned a little away from him, ostensibly to be nearer to the gas, but in reality that he might not see the crimson color which surged up into her face as she read. Mr. Pogson was as unscrupulous as fanatics invariably are. With a view of warning the public and inducing them to help him in crushing the false doctrine he abhorred, he had tried to stimulate them by publishing a sketch of Raeburn's personal character and life, drawn chiefly from his imagination, or from distorted and misquoted anecdotes which had for years been bandied about among his opponents, losing nothing in the process. Hatred of the man Luke Raeburn was his own great stimulus, and we are apt to judge others by ourselves. The publication of this letter really seemed to him likely to do great good, and the evil passions of hatred and bigotry had so inflamed his mind, that it was perfectly easy for him to persuade himself that the statements were true. Indeed, he only followed with the multitude to do evil in this instance, for not one in a thousand took the trouble to verify their facts, or even their quotations, when speaking of, or quoting Raeburn. The libel, to put it briefly, represented Raeburn as a man who had broken every one of the ten commandments.
Erica read steadily on, though every pulse in her beat at double time. It was long before she finished it, for a three-fold chorus was going on in her brain Mr. Pogson's libelous charges; the talk between her father and Hazeldine, which revealed all too plainly the harm already done to the cause of Christianity by this one unscrupulous man; and her own almost despairing cry to the Unseen: “Oh, Father! How is he ever to learn to know Thee, when such things as these are done in Thy name?”
That little sheet of paper had fallen among them like a thunderbolt.
“I have passed over a great deal,” Raeburn was saying when Erica looked up once more. “But I shall not pass over this! Pogson shall pay dearly for it! Many thanks, Hazeldine, for bringing me word; I shall take steps about it at once.”
He left the room quickly, and in another minute they heard the street door close behind him.
“That means an action for libel,” said Tom, knitting his brows. “And goodness only knows what fearful work and worry for the chieftain.”
“But good to the cause in the long run,” said Hazeldine. “And as for Mr. Raeburn, he only rises the higher the more they try to crush him. He's like the bird that rises out of its own ashes the phenix, don't they call it?”
Erica smiled a little at the comparison, but sadly.
“Don't judge Christianity by this one bad specimen,” she said, as she shook hands with Hazeldine.
“How do Christians judge us, Miss Erica?” he replied, sternly.
“Then be more just than you think they are as generous as you would have them be.”
“It's but a working-day world, miss, and I'm but a working-day man. I can't set up to be generous to them who treat a man as though he was the dirt in the street. And if you will excuse me mentioning it, miss, I could wish that this shameful treatment would show to you what a delusion it is you've taken up of late.”
“Mr. Pogson can hurt me very much, but not so fatally as that,” said Erica, as much to herself as to Hazeldine.
When he had gone she picked up the measure once more, and turned to Tom.
“Help me just to finish this, Tom,” she said. “We must try to move in as quickly as may be.”
Tom silently took the other end of the tape, and they set to work again; but all the enjoyment in the new house seemed quenched and destroyed by that blast of calumny. They knew only too well that this was but the beginning of troubles.
Raeburn, remembering his hasty speech, called Erica into the study the moment he heard her return. He was still very pale, and with a curiously rigid look about his face.
“I was right, you see, in my prophecy of rocks ahead,” he exclaimed, throwing down his pen. “You have come home to a rough time, Erica, and to an overharassed father.”
“The more harassed the father, the more reason that he should have a child to help him,” said Erica, sitting down on the arm of his chair, and putting back the masses of white hair which hung over his forehead.
“Oh, child!” he said, with a sigh, “if I can but keep a cool head and a broad heart through the years of trouble before us!”
“Years!” exclaimed Erica, dismayed.
“This affair may drag on almost indefinitely, and a personal strife is apt to be lowering.”
“Yes,” said Erica, musingly, “to be libeled does set one's back up dreadfully, and to be much praised humbles one to the very dust.”
“What will the Fane-Smiths say to this? Will they believe it of me?”
“I can't tell,” said Erica, hesitatingly.
“'He that's evil deemed is half hanged,'” said Raeburn bitterly. “Never was there a truer saying than that.”
“'Blaw the wind ne'er so fast, it will lown at the last'” quoted Erica, smiling. “Equally true, PADRE MIO.”
“Yes, dear,” he said quietly, “but not in my life time. You see if I let this pass, the lies will be circulated, and they'll say I can't contradict them. If I bring an action against the fellow, people will say I do it to flaunt my opinions in the face of the public. As your hero Livingstone once remarked, 'Isn't it interesting to get blamed for everything?' However, we must make the best of it. How about the new house? When can we settle in? I feel a longing for that study with its twenty-two feet o' length for pacing!”
“What are your engagements?” she asked, taking up a book from the table. “Eleventh, Newcastle; 12th, Nottingham; 13th and 14th, Plymouth. Let me see, that will bring you home on Monday, the 15th, and will leave us three clear days to get things straight; that will do capitally.”
“And you'll be sure to see that the books are carefully moved,” said Raeburn. “I can't have the markers displaced.”
Erica laughed. Her father had a habit of putting candle lighters in his books to mark places for references, and the appearance of the book shelves all bristling with them had long been a family joke, more especially as, if a candle lighter happened to be wanted for its proper purpose, there was never one to be found.
“I will pack them myself,” she said.
A paleness took the poet's cheek;“Must I drink here?” he seemed to seekThe lady's will with utterance meek.“Ay, ay,” she said, “it so must be,”(And this time she spake cheerfully)“Behooves thee know world's cruelty.” E. B. Browning
The trial of Luke Raeburn, on the charge of having published a blasphemous libel in a pamphlet entitled “Bible Miracles,” came on in the Court of Queen's Bench early in December. It excited a great deal of interest. Some people hoped that the revival of an almost obsolete law would really help to check the spread of heterodox views, and praised Mr. Pogson for his energy and religious zeal. These were chiefly well-meaning folks, not much given to the study of precedents. Some people of a more liberal turn read the pamphlet in question, and were surprised to see that matter quite as heterodox might be found in many high-class reviews which lay about on drawing room tables, the only difference being that the articles in the reviews were written in somewhat ambiguous language by fashionable agnostics, and that “Bible Miracles” was a plain, blunt, sixpenny tract, avowedly written for the people by the people's tribune.
This general interest and attention, once excited, gave rise to the following results: to an indiscriminate and wholesale condemnation of “that odious Raeburn who was always seeking notoriety;” to an immense demand for “Bible Miracles,” which in three months reached its fiftieth thousand; and to a considerable crowd in Westminster Hall on the first day of the trial, to watch the entrance and exit of the celebrities.
Erica had been all day in the court. She had written her article for the “Daily Review: in pencil during the break for luncheon; but, as time wore on, the heated atmosphere of the place, which was crammed to suffocation, became intolerable to her. She grew whiter and whiter, began to hear the voices indistinctly, and to feel as if her arms did not belong to her. It would never do to faint in court, and vexed as she was to leave, she took the first opportunity of speaking to her father.
“I think I must go,” she whispered, “I can't stand this heat.”
“Come now, then,” said Raeburn, “and I can see you out. This witness has nothing worth listening to. Take notes for me, Tom. I'll be back directly.”
They had only just passed the door leading into Westminster Hall, however, when Tom sent a messenger hurrying after them. An important witness had that minute been called, and Raeburn, who was, as usual, conducting his own case, could not possibly miss the evidence.
“I can go alone,” said Erica. “Don't stop.”
But even in his haste, Raeburn, glancing at the crowd of curious faces, was thoughtful for his child.
“No,” he said, hurriedly. “Wait a moment, and I'll send some one to you.”
She would have been wiser if she had followed him back into the court; but, having once escaped from the intolerable atmosphere, she was not at all inclined to return to it. She waited where he had left her, just within Westminster Hall, at the top of the steps leading from the entrance to the court. The grandeur of the place, its magnificent proportions, terminating in the great, upward sweep of steps, and the mellow stained window, struck her more than ever after coming from the crowded and inconvenient little court within. The vaulted roof, with its quaintly carved angels, was for the most part dim and shadowy, but here and there a ray of sunshine, slanting in through the clerestory windows, changed the sombre tones to a golden splendor. Erica, very susceptible to all high influences, was more conscious of the ennobling influence of light, and space, and beauty than of the curious eyes which were watching her from below. But all at once her attention was drawn to a group of men who stood near her, and her thoughts were suddenly brought back to the hard, every-day world, from which for a brief moment she had escaped. With a quick, apprehensive glance, she noted that among them was a certain Sir Algernon Wyte, a man who never lost an opportunity of insulting her father.
“Did you see the fellow?” said one of the group. “He came to the door just now.”
“And left his fair daughter to be a spectacle to men and angels?” said Sir Algernon.
Then followed words so monstrous, so intolerable, that Erica, accustomed as she was to discourtesies, broke down altogether. It was so heartless, so cruelly false, and she was so perfectly defenseless! A wave of burning color swept over her face. If she could but have gone away have hidden herself from those cruel eyes. But her knees trembled so fearfully that, had she tried to move, she must have fallen. Sick and giddy, the flights of steps looked to her like a precipice. She could only lean for support against the gray-stone moldings of the door way, while tears, which for once she could not restrain, rushed to her eyes. Oh! If Tom or the professor, or some one would but come to her! Such moments as those are not measured by earthly time; the misery seemed to her agelong though it was in reality brief enough for Brian, coming into Westminster Hall, had actually heard Sir Algernon's shameful slander, and pushing his way through the crowd, was beside her almost immediately.
The sight of his face checked her tears. It positively frightened her by its restrained yet intense passion.
“Miss Raeburn,” he said, in a clear, distinct voice, plainly heard by the group below, “this is not a fit place for you. Let me take you home.”
He spoke much more formally than was his wont, yet in his actions he used a sort of authority, drawing her hand within his arm, leading her rapidly through the crowd, which opened before them. For that one bitter-sweet moment she belonged to him. He was her sole, and therefore her rightful, protector. A minute more, and they stood in Palace Yard. He hastily called a hansom.
In the pause she looked up at him, and would have spoken her thanks, but something in his manner checked her. He had treated her so exactly as if she belonged to him, that, to thank him seemed almost as absurd as it would have done to thank her father. Then a sudden fear made her say instead:
“Are you coming home?”
“I will come to see that you are safely back presently,” he said, in a voice unlike his own. “But I must see that man first.”
“No, no,” she said, beginning to tremble again. “Don't go back. Please, please don't go!”
“I must,” he said, putting her into the hansom. Then, speaking very gently. “Don't be afraid; I will be with you almost directly.”
He closed the doors, gave the address to the driver, and turned away.
Erica was conscious of a vague relief as the fresh winter wind blew upon her. She shut her eyes, that she might not see the passers-by, only longing to get away right away, somewhere beyond the reach of staring eyes and cruel tongues. One evening years ago, she remembered coming out of St. James's Hall with Tom, and having heard a woman in Regent Street insulted in precisely the same language that had been used to her today. She remembered how the shrill, passionate cry had rung down the street: “How dare you insult me!” And remembered, too, how she had wondered whether perfect innocence would have been able to give that retort. She knew now that her surmise had been correct. The insult had struck her dumb for the time. Even now, as the words returned to her with a pain intolerable, her tears rained down. It seemed to her that for once she could no more help crying than she could have helped bleeding when cut.
Then once more her thoughts returned to Brian with a warmth of gratitude which in itself relieved her. He was a man worth knowing, a friend worth having. Yet how awful his face had looked as he came toward her. Only once in her whole life had she seen such a look on a man's face. She had seen it in her childhood on her father's face, when he had first heard of a shameful libel which affected those nearest and dearest to him. She had been far too young to understand the meaning of it, but she well remembered that silent, consuming wrath; she remembered running away by herself with the sort of half-fearful delight of a child's new discovery “Now I know how men look when they KILL!”
All at once, in the light of that old recollection, the truth dashed upon her. She smiled through her tears, a soft glow stole over her face, a warmth found its way to her aching heart. For at last the love of seven years had found its way to her.
She felt all in a glad tumult as that perception came to her. It had, in truth, been an afternoon of revelations. She had never until now in the least understood Brian's character, never in the least appreciated him. And as to dreaming that his friendship had been love from the very first, it had never occurred to her.
The revelation did not bring her unalloyed happiness for there came a sharp pang as she recollected what he had gone back to do. What if he should get into trouble on her behalf? What if he should be hurt? Accustomed always to fear for her father actual physical injury, her thoughts at once flew to the same danger for Brian. But, however sick with anxiety, she was obliged, on reaching home, to try and copy out her article, which must be in type and upon thousands of breakfast tables by the next morning whether her heart ached or not, whether her life were rough or smooth.
In the meantime, Brian, having watched her cab drive off, turned back into Westminster Hall. He could see nothing but the one vision which filled his brain the face of the girl he loved, a lovely, pure face suffused with tears. He could hear nothing but that intolerable slander which filled his heart with a burning, raging indignation. Straight as an arrow and as if by instinct, he made his way to the place where Sir Algernon and three or four companions were pacing to and fro. He confronted them, bringing their walk to an enforced pause.
“I am here to demand an apology for the words you spoke just now about Miss Raeburn,” he said, speaking in a voice which was none the less impressive because it trembled slightly as with a wrath restrained only by a great effort.
Sir Algernon, a florid, light-haired man of about thirty, coolly stared at him for a moment.
“Who may you be, sir, who take up the cudgels so warmly in Miss Raeburn's defense?”
“A man who will not hear a defenseless girl insulted,” said Brian, his voice rising. “Apologize!”
“Defenseless girl!” repeated the other in a tone so insufferable that Brian's passion leaped up like wild fire.
“You vile blackguard!” he cried, “what you said was an infernal lie, and if you don't retract it this moment, I'll thrash you within an inch of your life.”
Sir Algernon laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
“'Pon my life!” he exclaimed, turning to one of his companions, “if I'd know that Miss Raeburn—”
But the sentence was never ended for, with a look of fury, Brian sprung at him, seized him by the collar of his coat, and holding him like a vise with one hand, with the other brought down his cane upon the slanderer's shoulders with such energy that the wretch writhed beneath it.
The on-lookers, being gentlemen and fully aware that Sir Algernon deserved all he was getting, stood by, not offering to interfere, perhaps in their hearts rather sympathizing with the stranger whose righteous indignation had about it a manliness that appealed to them. Presently Sir Algernon ceased to kick, his struggles grew fainter. Brian let his right arm pause then, and with his left flung his foe into the corner as if he had been a mere chattel.
“There!” he exclaimed, “summons me for that when you please.” And, handing his card to one of Sir Algernon's companions, he strode out of the hall.
By the time he reached Guilford Square he was almost himself again, a little paler than usual but outwardly quite calm. He went at once to No. 16. The Raeburns had now been settled in their new quarters for some weeks, and the house was familiar enough to him; he went up to the drawing room or, as it was usually called, the green room. The gas was not lighted, but a little reading lamp stood upon a table in one of the windows, and the fire light made the paneled walls shine here and there though the corners and recesses were all in dusky shadow. Erica had made this the most home-like room in the house; it had the most beguiling easy chairs, it had all Mr. Woodward's best pictures, it had fascinating little tables, and a tempting set of books. There was something in the sight of the familiar room which made Brian's wrath flame up once more. Erica's guileless life seemed to rise before him the years of patient study, the beautiful filial love, the pathetic endeavor to restrain her child-like impatience of conventionalities lest scandalmongers should have even a shadow of excuse for slandering Luke Raeburn's daughter. The brutality of the insult struck him more than ever. Erica, glancing up from her writing table, saw that his face again bore that look of intolerable pain which had so greatly startled her in Westminster Hall.
She had more than half dreaded his arrival, had been wondering how they should meet after the strange revelation of the afternoon, had been thinking of the most trite and commonplace remark with which she might greet him. But when it actually came to the point, she could not say a word, only looked up at him with eyes full of anxious questioning.
“It is all right,” he said, answering the mute question, a great joy thrilling him as he saw that she had been anxious about him. “You should not have been afraid.”
“I couldn't help it,” she said, coloring, “he is such a hateful man! A man who might do anything. Tell me what happened.”
“I gave him a thrashing which he'll not soon forget,” said Brian. “But don't let us speak of him any more.”
“Perhaps he'll summons you!” said Erica.
“He won't dare to. He knows that he deserved it. What are you writing? You ought to be resting.”
“Only copying out my article. The boy will be here before long.”
“I am your doctor,” he said, feeling her pulse, and again assuming his authoritative manner; “I shall order you to rest on your couch at once. I will copy this for you. What is it on?”
“Cremation,” said Erica, smiling a little. “A nice funereal subject for a dreary day. Generally, if I'm in wild spirits, Mr. Bircham sends me the very gloomiest subject to write on, and if I'm particularly blue, he asks for a bright, lively article.”
“Oh! He tells you what to write on?”
“Yes, did you think I had the luxury of choosing for myself? Every day, about eleven o'clock a small boy brings me my fate on a slip of paper. Let me dictate this to you. I'm sure you can't read that penciled scribble.”
“Yes, I can,” said Brian. “You go and rest.”
She obeyed him, thankful enough to have a moment's pause in which to think out the questions that came crowding into her mind. She hardly dared to think what Brian might be to her, for just now she needed him so sorely as friend and adviser, that to admit that other perception, which made her feel shy and constrained with him, would have left her still in her isolation. After all, he was a seven years' friend, no mere acquaintance, but an actual friend to whom she was her unreserved and perfectly natural self.
“Brian,” she said presently when he had finished her copying, “you don't think I'm bound to tell my father about this afternoon, do you?”
A burning, painful blush, the sort of blush that she never ought to have known, never could have known but for that shameful slander, spread over her face and neck as she spoke.
“Perhaps not,” said Brian, “since the man has been properly punished.”
“I think I hope it need never get round to him in any other way,” said Erica. “He would be so fearfully angry, and just now scarcely a day passes without bringing him some fresh worry.”
“When will the Pogson affair come on?”
“Oh! I don't know. Not just yet, I'm afraid. Things in the legal world always move at the rate of a fly in a glue pot.”
“What sort of man is Mr. Pogson?”
“He was in court today, a little, sleek, narrow-headed man with cold, gray eyes. I have been trying to put myself in his place, and realize the view he takes of things; but it is very, very hard. You don't know what it is to live in this house and see the awful harm his intolerance is bringing about.”
“In what way did you specially mean?”
“Oh! In a thousand ways. It is bringing Christianity into discredit, it is making them more bitter against it, and who can wonder. It is bringing hundreds of men to atheism, it is enormously increasing the demand for all my father's books, and already even in these few months it has doubled the sale of the 'Idol-Breakers.' In old times that would have been my consolation. Oh! It is heart-breaking to see how religious people injure their own cause. Surely they might have learned by this time that punishment for opinion is never right, that it brings only bitterness, and misery, and more error! How is one to believe that this is right that God means all this bigotry and injustice to go on producing evil?”
“Surely it will teach the sharp lesson that all pain teaches,” said Brian. “We Christians have broken His order, have lost the true idea of brotherly love, and from this arises pain and evil, which at last, when it touches our own selfish natures, will rouse us, wake us up sharply, drive us back of necessity to the true Christ-following. Then persecution and injustice will die. But we are so terribly asleep that the evil must grow desperate before we become conscious of it. It seems to me that bigotry has at least one mortal foe, though. You are always here; you must show them by your life what the Father is THAT is being a Christian!”
“I know,” said Erica, a look of almost passionate longing dawning in her eyes. “Oh! What a thing it is to be crammed full of faults that hinder one from serving! And all these worries do try one's temper fearfully. If they had but a Donovan to live with them now! But, as for me, I can't do much, except love them.”
Brian loved her too truly to speak words of praise and commendation at such a time.
“Is not the love the crux of the whole?” he said quietly.
“I suppose it is,” said Erica, pushing back her hair from her forehead in the way she always did when anything perplexed her. “But just at present my life is a sort of fugue on Browning's line